At dawn, Eve opened her eyes and squinted against the bar of light that fell across her face. Curtains. That was another thing she needed to buy, along with rugs to cover the old, creaky hardwood floor. She curled her toes against the slight chill as she swung her legs out of bed and stood. A few bruises showed red and purple on her forearms where she’d hit the center stone the night before, and she rubbed them gently.

Eyes nearly closed, she yawned and stepped from the bedroom into the rest of her new apartment. It was nice, much nicer than she’d expected from the price. Brick walls, wide windows, a tiny balcony with french doors. A one-bedroom like this would have been way out of her budget in Raven Falls, where her parents lived. But that was the appeal of Blackwood: low cost of living and nobody she knew nearby to get in her business.

A thump came from the living room, and Eve frowned. The feeling of something following her home from the henge came back to her, and her heart beat hard against her ribs. Another thump. She moved down the short hallway past the bathroom. A loud yowl greeted her in the living room, and she frowned harder. Something large and fluffy and dark brown skittered behind the stripy-yellow couch. Eve’s eyes widened, and she crouched beside it. A cat stared at her from behind a box full of books and squeaked.

“How did you get in here?” Eve asked, laughing slightly as her pulse began to slow. The cat sat down and swished its tail around to cover its paws. It watched her with orange eyes, focused but calm. She held out a hand to let it sniff her fingers, but it pushed its large head against her hand and started purring. “Do you have a collar?” She rubbed one hand over its head and reached into the thick fur around its neck with the other. No luck. The cat stood and pressed closer to her.

The scream from the night before echoed in her head, and she thought of the way the henge runes had glowed. She narrowed her eyes at the nearly corgi-sized cat. It looked like a perfectly normal, non-magical cat. It meowed and looked disdainfully at her, the way only a cat can, as if it knew what she’d been thinking. Eve huffed and crossed her arms.

Standing, she looked around the room. The front door was fully closed, as were the doors to the balcony. Cats could fit through the tiniest openings, though, right? The cat in question twined around her ankles and meowed more insistently until she leaned down. It rose on its back legs and all but forced Eve to pick it up. Once in her arms, it climbed into what she assumed was its favorite position: slung over one shoulder like a dish towel. She left it there, one hand on its butt to keep it secure, and stepped into the kitchen.

The renter before her had left almost all the furniture and equipment a person could need, and plenty of food, too. As weird as it was—who would buy all that and leave it behind?—Eve wasn’t going to complain.

She searched the kitchen for something to eat. Something easy, that wouldn’t require fresh foods or lighting up the ancient, terrifying-looking gas stove. One cupboard held split peas, moldy bread, and several cans of creamed corn. She pursed her lips. In the next cupboard, spices were lined up in labeled, glass jars.

Before she could close the door, all the cupboards and drawers opened at once. She shivered in a sudden patch of cold air as the image of shadows dripping from the stones of the North Henge rose in her mind. She desperately wanted a cup of coffee; it was far too early for this shit.

Taking a breath, Eve scanned the shelves. A box with cats printed all over it sat in one, full of canned cat food. As she looked at it, the other doors slammed closed, nearly clipping the side of her head in the process. This time she sighed deeply. Maybe if she pretended it didn’t exist, whatever this was would stop happening.

“Do you live here?” she asked the cat. It purred and rubbed the side of its face against hers. “I’ll give you breakfast at least, poor baby.” She reached in and blindly grabbed two cans. “Do you want ‘salmon dinner’ or ‘chicken morsels?’”

The cat didn’t seem to have a preference, so she shrugged and opened the chicken morsels. At the sound, it leaped off her shoulder and started twisting around her feet again. Eve grabbed a little plate and emptied the can onto it. As she set it on the wood floor, the cat dug in and purred louder.

She went to throw the can away under the sink, and the recycling bin fell over. Rolling her eyes, she looked over the can. The bottom was stamped with a recycling symbol. As she moved to toss it into the bin, the kitchen tap turned on at full blast. She pressed her lips together.

“Don’t tell me what to do, bitch,” she muttered. Still, she rinsed the can, turned off the water, and tossed it into the bin.

She needed to go somewhere else for a while, she decided. The henge incident had made her paranoid, clearly, and she needed some time away from whatever was going on with her kitchen. Maybe the apartment wasn’t level. Maybe the cat had left a window open and it was freak gust season in Blackwood. Hanging out with the mystery cat and the self-opening cabinets would only make her more paranoid, and she might even start thinking the g-word. She gagged and opened the map on her phone. She was acting like her parents. Pushing the thought aside, Eve found a diner down the street from the hardware store her apartment sat on top of.

“Okay, cat. I’m leaving for now. You can do whatever you want,” she said, putting on a t-shirt and shorts and grabbing her backpack. The cat watched her with half-lidded eyes. “I don’t want anybody touching my things, though,” she added, louder than necessary. She glared around the living room to make sure she was understood and left.

***

WaffleHenge was the kind of dated, deserted diner that seemed right for a town like Blackwood—a sleepy little lake town with not much going for it but its proximity to Lakeside University and occasional occult tourism. The door chimed when she pushed it open, and a woman about Eve’s mom’s age straightened up from the counter at the back. Her blue-painted fingernails tapped once on the laminate.

“Welcome to WaffleHenge. You can take a seat wherever you like, and I’ll bring you a menu in a minute,” she said. Eve nodded and sat in a booth near a sunny window, the cracked vinyl creaking under her and sticking to her thighs. The diner was one small room, with a dozen tables and a handful of customers, and despite the name, it looked extremely normal. The only concession to tourists was a large poster on one wall detailing the various henge locations around Blackwater Lake.

Eve pulled her notebook out and set it in front of her. The woman, whose name tag read “Donna,” came over with a laminated breakfast menu and a pot of coffee. She brushed some of her shoulder-length curly hair away from her face.

“Coffee?” she asked, lifting the pot.

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll give you a bit to look that over.” Donna turned to leave but stopped when Eve straightened.

“I know what I want to order,” she said. “If you’ve got a stack of pancakes?”

Donna nodded. “I’ll bring that out to you in a few.” As soon as she was gone, Eve flipped her notebook open to the start of her notes from the day before. She’d gotten good copies of most of the distinct henge runes, except the ones that were higher up on the trilithons. There were, of course, other examples of henge runes that were already on the internet, and she’d seen many of them. But she’d wanted exact copies of the passages carved into the Blackwater Henges.

She looked at the page and blinked, flipping back and forth. Her notes weren’t there. She went back a few pages. All of her previous work was there. The penmanship exercises she’d done a few days ago were the last things she’d written before the runes, and they were still sitting on the paper. But the page where her notes should have been was blank.

Her notes had been in pencil, and when she looked closely, she could see that the henge runes were still there. They were faint, though, almost completely smudged away. She brushed over one with the tip of her finger. It left graphite on her skin.

Eve sat back against the over-filled booth cushion, poured six creamer packs into her mug of coffee, and took a slow sip. It looked like someone had done a bad job of erasing her work. Only, there were no rubber marks or dust. She narrowed her eyes and took another drink. It looked more like the graphite had faded over years of exposure and wear.

Donna came back after a few minutes with a plate of golden pancakes. When she set them down in front of Eve, she lingered for a second. “There you go,” she said. When Eve nodded, she took that as a sign to start a conversation. “I haven’t seen you around here before. What brings you to Blackwood?”

Eve cleared her throat, her fragile hope of being able to eat in peace dying before her eyes. “I just moved here,” she said, her tone not inviting further questions.

Sadly, as with most persistently nosy people, the tone didn’t deter Donna. “You’re that girl that moved into Chelsea Horton’s old place.” She was suddenly, heartbreakingly, more interested in Eve than she had been before. “You notice any strange occurrences in that apartment?”

“No,” Eve said, like a liar. She eyed the pancakes desperately. They were perfectly round and fat, the golden brown color begging to be shoved by the forkful into her mouth. Her stomach grumbled.

“Silly me, you probably don’t know anything about poor Chelsea.” Donna settled in for a long talk, placing the coffee pot she’d been carrying on Eve’s table and resting a hand on the back of the other seat. Eve pressed her lips together. “The town still isn’t over what happened to her,” Donna said, shaking her head.

Eve did not ask what had happened to poor Chelsea. Donna continued anyway. “She went missing a couple of months ago, left behind her parents and her boyfriend. Didn’t even take her wallet. Police think she’s probably, you know.” She made a sound like ‘bleh’ and drew her hand across her neck. “Only, there’s no body, and the parents don’t want to believe it. They’re devastated.” Eve stared at her, and Donna decided that was her cue to keep talking. “They gave up her apartment. And Pearson, the owner, was saying he heard some odd bangs and cries from above. Apartment’s probably haunted now.”

“Oh.” Eve took a long drink of her coffee and glanced down at her empty mug. Donna refilled it. “That explains why it was so cheap.”

Donna chuckled. “Anyway, I’m Donna.” She looked expectantly at Eve.

“Eve,” Eve said. “Hey, did Chelsea have a cat?”

Donna shrugged. “Enjoy your breakfast.”

Helpful, Eve thought and dug in.

***

When Eve opened the door to the apartment, she half-hoped the cat would be gone. But as she dropped her grocery bags on the floor of the kitchen, it appeared on top of the fridge.

“Shit,” she said. The cat didn’t seem to care. It stared down at her before leaping off and landing silently on the floor. “I didn’t get anything for you.” It sniffed at her frozen pizza and watched, unblinking, as Eve put the food away. Staring at the old stove, she wondered for a second if it was even safe to use. She shrugged. Only one way to find out.

Eve started preheating the oven before heading over to the desk Chelsea, apparently, had left behind. It was long, but not as deep as she preferred. It would work, though, and she set up her laptop, drawing pad, and scanner on the birch-themed particle board.

As she plugged in cords under the desk, the oven beeped. Something hit her feet and jingled as she scooted back. She narrowed her eyes.

A bright yellow collar lay on the floor. Eve ignored it for a moment to open up one of her pizzas and stick it in the oven. She was bent over waves of hot air when another jingle sounded behind her. This time when she turned around, the collar was on the kitchen floor. The cat lounged on its back in a patch of summer sunlight and didn’t appear inclined to move any time soon. Eve sighed and picked the collar up.

“Harvey,” she read from the heart-shaped tag. The cat lifted its head and blinked at her. “Come here, Harvey.” With a squeak, he rolled over and trotted to her. He let her clasp the collar around his neck, where it was almost buried under his thick fur.

Eve looked up from the cat and scanned the room. She stood and inspected the cabinet doors, opening and closing them over and over. They closed fully, and there weren’t any hidden strings or hinges she could see. Magnets? Maybe, but that seemed too involved.

What would be the point in convincing her there was a ghost in her apartment? In staging some elaborate fake haunting? She pulled a chair over and checked on top of the cupboards for cameras or secret panels. Nothing.

If someone was trying to scare her, surely they’d go for the classics instead. Spooky noises, smashed glass, messages in a fogged-up mirror. Not a reminder to rinse recyclables before putting them in the bin. Eve decided to ignore it for now. The ‘presence’ wasn’t doing anything too annoying, and Harvey was very soft.

Plus, she had orders to finish and send out. Shame about the henge runes, though. She’d been looking forward to making a few sample spells with the original phrasing on them; that was the kind of arcane shit her customers ate up. Now she’d have to go back to the North Henge, with a camera this time.

Cracking her knuckles, she sat on the yellow-cushioned desk chair and opened her email. The first order that caught her eye was a custom message in Latin, handwritten in the glow-in-the-dark ink on the fancy fake-aged fake parchment. Sometimes she wondered about the people who ordered from her. And then she looked at the requested message and made a face. It was a curse, which either meant a high-schooler going through a witch phase or an extremely petty adult with too much money. Seriously, Latin? How basic could they get? At least it was easy to write neatly.

She reread the message and raised her eyebrows. Maggots, that was nice. Eve added a ‘not’ to the curse as she worked out the translation and snorted at herself. As if any of it was real.

At the beep of the timer, she checked on the pizza. “You could at least haunt the oven so it doesn’t burn my food,” she said to the air as she pulled it out, the crust and cheese dark brown and crisp. There was no response. She took a piece anyway.

As she ate, she looked up the Blackwood Review’s—Blackwood’s only newspaper—website. It looked like it had last been updated a decade ago, but the search bar worked well enough to find a couple of articles when she searched ‘missing person,’ at least. The most recent was from a little over two months ago—“No New Leads on Missing Blackwood Woman.” Eve skimmed the article, written by Ezra Park.

Chelsea Horton had disappeared sometime overnight on the 11th of May and missed her classes at Lakeside University, where she was studying to be a nurse. Police had found all her belongings in the apartment, with no sign of robbery. A few drops of blood were found near her bed. Most importantly, according to Park, the bed had been stripped, and the sheets had gone missing, too. Eve paused on that piece of information and chewed for a minute. Suspicious.

And unfortunate. If Chelsea had died in this apartment, which sounded more and more likely, there was a chance—even thinking this made Eve’s chest tighten in indignation—that the ghostly occurrences were, in fact, caused by a ghost. She pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair.

“I didn’t ask for a roommate,” she said experimentally. “Maybe you should, like, move on?”

The standing lamp next to the desk flickered briefly. She eyed it and sighed around another mouthful of pizza. This was going to be annoying.